


Clothes Make The Man

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [96]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers being assholes, Gen, Humor, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24606541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: In which bonding activities go entirely according to plan.  Just ... not entirely Cody's plan.  (And not Rex's planat all.)
Series: Soft Wars [96]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 48
Kudos: 522
Collections: Fun/Humour/Crack in a Galaxy Far Far Away





	Clothes Make The Man

Hours later, when Ghost’s been queued for restock and their ration allowances are tallied, when Shinies have assigned battle buddies and have flooded ever-unprepared Coruscant like jetpack downwash, when all the reports are tabbed for review and Boil is left (loudly unhappily) as Cherek shift command, Cody lets himself into Obi-Wan’s apartments.

Rex is stripped down to his stock black undershorts and left glove. Obi-Wan presides over the whole sordid debacle, grin like a nexu that’s sunk its teeth in a particularly slow cherfer.

“I’ll be honest,” Rex says with badly hidden chagrin, “I’m not entirely sure how this happened.”

Waxer and Crys, the karking asses, have most of a full outfit and a look of determination about as real as a Hoth summer between them. Wooley’s fully dressed, sure, but there’s a murder of sweaters Obi-Wan’s nesting in that gives tell to how _that_ happened. Trapper’s pulled back from the table and modeling this seasons high fashion in towels, sticking his scrawny scout chest out to far-too-cheerfully flaunt his misfortune.

Obi-Wan is dressed fit for a council meeting.

It’s been _three hours_. These frauds and cheaters and scum can damn well go a karking half a galactic standard cycle with no one the richer when they put their bucket fillers to it.

Rex’s shorts squeak against the flimsy folding chair. Cody groans. _Three hours_.

“You’re a _tube-_ _dripping_ _-wet_ embarrassment to the Shebse, Rex’ika, I don’t know how you don’t slip in your own sludge getting out of bed in the mornings. Bly taught you how to count cards.”

“Funny thing about counting cards, _Kot’ika_ ,” he sneers loftily. “It’s only really effective if you’re the only one cheating. Or if _maybe_ one other person is cheating. It doesn’t work if there are more than _eight decks in play General_.”

His first mistake, Cody thinks, was not insisting that Obi-Wan play without his extremely voluminous robe with it’s many layers and seams. His second mistake is not realizing that Trapper’s out but not down, and he’s got himself a sweet little hustle going swapping cards between Obi-Wan and Wooley.

He is, Cody thinks with no little amount of reservation, smuggling cards while wearing a towel. He prays to Fox’s bit of the Force that’s okay with shooting assholes that Trapper also had the good sense and basic hygiene to keep _his_ shorts.

Of course neither Crys nor Waxer will call either of the Ghost troopers on it, much less their General. Squad Pride, Oya and all that.

“Oh leave him be Commander,” Waxer defends, wholesome as an anooba who’s still got what’s left of someone’s pet hawkbat between his teeth. “He’s having fun!” ‘We’re having fun’ he means. Under the table he swaps two cards to Crys for one and a chip. Half of Obi-Wan’s hand goes Wooley-via-Trapper and vice versa.

The timer hits zero and the suits all change. Rex’s jaw ticks.

Mistake three: playing cards against this lot when you have a sabacc face as obvious as Mustafar is a bit warm. Cody’s heard tell a good scoop of the nat-borns on fleet think vode are hard to read. He supposes it’s likely it helps when you know the face you’re reading as well as the vod under it does. And Rex’ika uses his face to crinkle at the nose and eyes when he’s frustrated.

It’s really no wonder every single Ghost at the table immediately simultaneously decided to fleece him for everything he wore. The pout is too cute. Honestly, even Cody kind of wants to pick on him a little.

Obi-Wan takes the hand, and around the table he collects a piece from everyone still in play. Wooley strips off his sweater and there’s _still_ another underneath. Rex’s glove is placed carefully down center table in that careful motion that says he’d like to be throwing it at someone. Probably Obi-Wan. The last of his hand follows. There are, Cody notes, at least two more cards in it than should have been in a hand that round. Little wonder Rex kept that glove that long. Points for effort, at least.

“I’m out,” Rex announces primly.

“Oh come now Captain, surely-”

“No,” he barks firmly. Obi-Wan’s grin does not even flicker. “I am not falling for that again. It’s worth my dignity to keep my shorts, thank you kindly sir.” That ‘thank you’ sounds quite a bit like ‘kark you’ and Cody is so _proud_ of him.

“I _told you_ he cheats like the worst cantina sleemo.”

Cody starts, and rounds the neglected couch. He hadn’t even noticed Anakin, curled in a corner on the floor surrounded by the sadly whirring innards of a mousedroid. There’s a click every few seconds it spins its wheels that sounds strange even to Cody’s unpracticed ear.

It figures though that he’d be here to supervise. This was entirely Anakin’s plan. He’d assured Cody that it was foolproof: Obi-Wan is on very good terms with just about _everyone_ he’s cheated at cards, he’d claimed, it’s the best cure for that lingering awkwardness between the two.

Watching Rex excuse himself from the table with a drenched tooka’s stiff-legged indignation, Cody is forced to agree. He's comfortable enough to get stroppy, anyway. If they were alone, Cody'd kick his feet out from under him, for fun.

He hitches a hip up against the wall and nudges Anakin’s shoulder with a knee. Anakin sways with it, nudges back a greeting. “You mean you warned him and he still turned out this pathetic a showing?”

If they’d been alone, the paint-stripping glare Rex shoots him would have been followed up with a tackle. Cody grins sugar sweet and tubie innocent.

“He harrumphs _just_ like Obi-Wan does,” Anakin announces in the galaxy’s worst approximation of furtive. “Do you think it’s contagious?”

Obi-Wan and Rex both sniff in unison, then both in unison pretend they didn’t do that very thing.

Waxer’s face goes scout-blank with hilarity. Crys snickers, and Wooley doesn’t pretend to hide his giggles. Trapper’s too busy very obviously sorting multiple decks. Force’s sake Rex; they weren’t even _subtle_. Torrent’s been terrible for him.

“Up,” Rex growls and knocks a knuckle to the back of Anakin’s head, “I’m bullying you out of your cloak.”

“I was _not_ designed for this kind of treatment,” the Jedi grouses, just like any vod from among the troopers would. “Good Republic taxpayer credits paid for that warranty you’re gonna void. Where’s your patriotism? And I have spare robes. Obi-Wan have you danced ceremoniously around a bonfire of all my stuff yet?” He earns himself rolled eyes from Rex and an ‘Anakin, _really_ ’ from Obi-Wan.

Hypocrites. Cody’s heard worse from both of them _this week_.

“It’s like an akk puppy. Carrying a kitten,” Crys decides, once Rex has harried Anakin in the vague direction of the apartments’ berthing.

“Thanks,” Cody deadpans. “I raised him myself.”

“I’d heard that Commander Wolffe-”

Obi-Wan’s sitting room isn’t very big, and tonight it’s dominated by the light folding table and chairs they’d set up for this _set up_. It’s only two steps between Cody and a thwack to the back of Wooley’s fluffy empty head.

“We don’t talk about Cody and Commander Wolffe’s acrimonious custody arrangement,” Obi-Wan declares loftily and blatantly deals from the bottom of the deck. “Cody is quite sensitive about it.”

“How’s that herbal tea Bore blended for you? All that caffeine can’t be good.”

“No need to get vicious dear.”

He does it on purpose, Cody knows, because he’s an actual troll and he adores the reactions. It’s those self-same reactions that differentiate troopers from command: Wooley and Trapper sputter and choke. Crys mouths _dear_ in the most salacious way possible. Waxer makes a kissy face.

_Waxer_. The man who talked his crush into adopting a child with him nearly a year before he dug up his _ rugame _1 out of his ammo pouch and copped to anything. Is this _really_ a rotary cannon he wants to roulette?

Waxer’s grin is pure challenge. _Well_. It’s been a while since they’d gone out and gotten themselves in some scrap hasn’t it? Cody’s going to have to take Waxer outside and remind him, give him something the Guard will bark at them over during Weekly Actions.

“ _Why_ are there so many straps?”

The Lieutenant’s got the sith’s own luck, that Rex interrupts right then.

Or, no. It’s Cody that’s got a Darth’s own luck and all the curses that go along with it. It’s the only explanation.

Rex is not quite sketching double-time on his march to the fresher, but it’s a fair clip. In the sitting room conversation stops.

“To keep it from falling off,” comes the answer from the berths. There’s a pause. “I’m suddenly aware of the irony,” Anakin admits.

Sliding doors can’t slam, but Rex gives it an ARC trooper’s try.

Anakin is built tall but slight, and his robes pull taut across Rex’s chest. It’s no worse than blacks, really. But the familiar swathing of belts and cloth, wrapped with a Jedi’s cloak’s loaned air of respectability and topped with a vod face: it gives the whole thing that dissonant shudder of feeling just a shade east of strange.

Conversation is very reluctant to resume.

“I’d like to remind everyone,” Cody offers to the stares, “that that is in fact my youngest baby brother that I am inordinately and violently fond of. And I know where every single one of you bunks.”

“Yes,” says Crys with the beskar pair that dragged him from infantry straight to command, “but would you be willing to tell _him_ where I-”

“The black works with his skin tone,” Waxer interrupts with an admirable attempt at blandness. “And hair.”

“Very well,” Wooley volunteers. “Very, very, very well.” Cody isn’t sure what he intended to accomplish with that. He’s still in thwapping range. Cody thwaps him again; it doesn’t stop him staring at the ‘fresher door.

Across the room Obi-Wan looks thoughtful. Dangerous.

He and Fisto are friends, aren’t they?

“You’ve had your fun,” Cody tries to divert with a sinking feeling of hopelessness. “You can give him his civs back now.” You can’t let him leave wearing that, Cody thinks and tries not to give away that driving edge of desperation that’s guaranteed to dial Obi-Wan directly to ornery.

Yes, that smile says, he can.

“He lost an honorably made bet, Commander,” Obi-Wan lies like a politician. “His clothes will be cleaned and delivered to Torrent dorms promptly tomorrow morning.” There’s the pit trap, Cody thinks. Where’s the – “Unless, of course.” _Bait_.

Cards dance between Obi-Wan’s hands and through his fingers in a rain of controlled chaos. His smile is silk sheath around a stiletto. “I’ll play you one round, one-on-one, all in,” he offers, magnanimous as a monarch and just as treacherous. Cody knows better.

“I’m not holding your lightsaber Anakin.”

“I just want to _see_. Did they leave your spine in the can when they decanted you?”

His mistake, Cody realizes, was assuming Anakin was only peddling to one player in today’s game.

There’s a very familiar electric hum behind him. Ghosts around the table lean to get a better look. Cody takes Rex’s abandoned seat. “ _I_ deal,” he demands and Obi-Wan agrees much too easily.

* * *

“Kark,” Rex mutters first, before there’s a clatter galloping down the hall away from them. “Kark,” he says again, with feeling.

“Tell me that was Ghost,” Cody begs. Hope is a thing long flown, and all he has are the dregs of it. Ghost is _already_ going to be buzzing with this for weeks, one more eye-witness won’t be too devastating.

“It’s dark, but I think Lightning colors.”

“Kark,” Cody agrees.

There’s far too much fabric in cloaks. The tan weave is far looser than the polycotton of his grays much less the picoprene of his blacks, and it sits strange on his skin. Worse, it keeps trying to slide down his shoulders and Cody is left clutching at the neck like foreign dignitaries with their insignia when they go Coruscant low-side. It wouldn’t be so bad, except he’s learned tonight his shoulders weren’t meant for robes. They gape at the chest in a way Cody would have been sure is entirely against the Code if he’d never met Vos.

He’s not thinking about the tights right now. He’d prefer not to think of the tights or where they might be crawling their way up. Ever.

“We should run,” Rex says and Cody has to now think about the tights and just how unpleasant such an undertaking is. “ _Ponds_ ,” Rex grunts before Cody can even start complaining. Cody’s teeth snap closed.

“Fair,” he grits. “Torrent’s closer. If we’re lucky your idiots are all still out flirting with curfew.”

“Why did you have to date someone _so much like you_?” Rex bites back, and it’s as good as agreement. They run.

Well. Mostly run. Jedi tights really do cling where they really ought not. Cody will have get Obi-Wan to swap to blacks if it kills them both.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Balls. Back  
> 


End file.
